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One day in November of last year, the Indigenous leader Julia Chuñil called for her canine companion, Cholito, and they set off into the woods near her home to look for missing livestock. The cattle returned but Julia, who was 72 at the time, and her dog did not.

Over 100 people participated with her relatives in a search lasting multiple weeks in the steep, rain-soaked and densely overgrown landscape of the nation of Chile’s pristine Valdivian woodland. After a month, they monitored scavenger birds for any disturbing signs. But they discovered no evidence of the missing woman.

Julia Chuñil is among one hundred forty-six land and environmental defenders who were murdered or disappeared around the world in the previous year, as reported by a report by the advocacy organization the monitoring entity. Roughly one-third of these cases, like her, were from Indigenous communities – a heavy burden for peoples who together make up only 6% of the global population.

Chuñil, a leader of Chile’s indigenous Mapuche, was living on contested land. Ten years ago she had settled in a protected forest area, a 2,200-acre portion of the age-old Valdivian forest 800 kilometers below Santiago, which her people asserted as an ancestral territory.

For many years she campaigning to obtain land rights for the site for her tribe. However, the legal proprietor of the land, the heir of colonizers, refused to relinquish ownership. He wanted the area for logging – Chile is a major exporter of lumber to the US – and he wanted rid of the activist. Before she vanished, Chuñil informed allies: “Should harm come to me, you already know who is responsible.”

International Reporting on Violence Against Defenders

The organization started documenting cases of killings and vanishing acts of territorial and ecological defenders in the year 2012. Since then, it has collated a overall count of two thousand two hundred fifty-three cases. For the past decade, the riskiest place has been Central and South America. In 2024 it accounted for eighty-two percent of reported incidents, which involved forty-five native individuals.

“Territorial disputes lies at the core of aggression against activists, and Indigenous peoples are paying the highest price,” stated a senior policy adviser at Global Witness. “Communities with ancestral connections to territory often lead the opposition when their territories are endangered from resource extraction and invasion. However, regardless of their critical function, they are frequently refused acknowledgment and justice, and exposed to serious risk for defending their legitimate lands.”

Nation-Specific Data and Under-reporting

Chuñil’s was the sole case documented in her nation during that period, although it matched a pattern of the targeting of Mapuche advocates in Chile. The nation of Colombia reported forty-eight cases, making it the most lethal nation in total for environmental defenders, then came the country of Guatemala with 20 cases, the most dangerous country per capita. Mexico had nineteen incidents, putting it in third place overall.

Incomplete data continues to be a problem, particularly in the Asian continent and the African region, which recorded 16 and nine cases each, the monitor said. Overall, the previous year the lowest number of incidents of murders and disappearances of land activists were registered for a decade.

Laura Furones, who conducted the research for Global Witness, commented: “It would be gratifying to report that this implies a decrease in violence and an improvement in the situation for activists, but unfortunately that’s not true. Rights advocates confront realities of violence that go far beyond murder. What violence often does is evolve, grow more complex, change its face.”

Ongoing Fight for Justice

Julia’s relatives have continued to pursue justice but their activism has made them a target of intimidation and intimidation, as well. In April, two animals from her property that they had planned to auction to finance legal costs were found killed, one shot and one poisoned. “It is, above all, a deliberate attempt to prevent us from pursuing this case,” her son a family member informed Global Witness.

The group’s report calls on governments to act to halt the lack of punishment of the perpetrators of environmental defenders by addressing the absence of legal entitlements defenders have over land and territory, reinforcing weak national legal systems, and guaranteeing endangered advocates are given sufficient state protection.

“Our sole request is a full, fair investigation to be conducted,” the son said of his parent’s situation. “Nearly twelve months have passed since she disappeared and we’re remain unaware about the events. Our demand is those behind this to be discovered and prosecuted.”